There's a Little Bit of Hope In All of Us
by CaLee
Summary: (Chap.1-4 up; set before second season started) Max and Zack are dead, Loagn has nothing, but a new stranger may hold the key to everything, even to the downfall of Manticore
1. Shadows

There's a Little Bit of Hope in All of US  
  
  
  
Chap. 1  
  
The darkness seemed to go on forever. Could this be real?? Was Zack really gone? Dead?? He couldn't be. He died to save me. He killed himself so that I could live...but why?  
  
Max opened her eyes and tried to focus on something..anything. Her eyes couldn't seem to find anything worth looking at. A soft noise made Max shift her head to the right. "Is someone there?"  
  
The drugs they had her doped up on were making her head feel so heavy. Max couldn't keep her head from falling back onto the pillow. Her eyes fluttered shut.  
  
Slowly a dark figure crept to the side of Max's bed. Was she dreaming? Or was someone really there standing over her?  
  
"Who are you?" Max tried to make her voice sound commanding but she knew not even the rats on the floor would scatter at the slight whimper that was her voice.  
  
"You're not alone." The voice came as a soft whisper. Max tried to decide if it belonged to a man or a woman, but her head was throbbing and the room was spinning slowly.  
  
"You will never be alone. Not as long as there is hope. Hope will not give up on you, that is my promise to you, Max." The figure seemed to reach out to her but Max felt the room spinning more violently and in a flash, the stranger was gone and Max was out. 


	2. Last Wish

Chap.2  
  
The rain pelted the window, washing away all the dirt from the hot day. Logan sat looking out his window, longing to be with her.  
  
"Why was I so stupid?" Logan growled and turned away from the window and wheeled himself over to his desk. He picked up the photo ID Max had left sitting there the night before she died.  
  
"I'm so sorry, Max.." Logan let his fingertips slowly trace her picture. A tear slid down his face, dropping onto the ID tag.  
  
"If I could go back and do it all over again, I wouldn't. Max and Zack trusted me, and I blew it!" Logan slammed his fist on the side of his desk, pissed that he could have been so stupid.  
  
It had been over two months since that fateful night. Over and Over he saw Max, laying in his arms, dead. He had wanted to take her with him, but he had been forced to leave her body there just outside of Manticore.  
  
Ever since that night Logan had been blaming himself, telling himself that if it hadn't been for him, if he hadn't been so obsessed with meeting the woman that had broken into his apartment, taken out his armed guard with a single punch and then jumped out his high-rise window, she would be alive right now.  
  
"You can't keep blaming yourself, Logan." Deck stood up and walked over to put his hand on Logan's shoulder. "Max and Zack were both big kids. They were going to do what they wanted anyways..they always did, you know that."  
  
"But if I had seen this coming.." Logan dropped Max's ID back onto his desk.  
  
"Logan..No one could see this coming. Max and Zack are gone. But their fight will still live, just as long as you keep up your work. Don't give that up. Keep Max and Zack alive in your fight." Deck patted Logan on the back and walked out of the apartment, closing the door behind him.  
  
Logan sat there, thinking about what Deck had just said.  
  
"What fight? I can't do it alone. Not in this damn chair!" Logan wheeled around back to the rain-washed window. The rain wasn't letting up.  
  
Logan looked at the watery world and remembered his mother. She had loved the rain. "Rain is GOD's way of washing everything clean again." She used to say. Logan missed her so much. When he was little, his mother had told him that if he wanted something bad enough, and if he was willing to make big enough sacrifices, anything could come true.  
  
What if it was true? What if he COULD bring Max back? What kind of sacrifices would that take? To get her back?  
  
"Max." Logan wanted her back so badly. He was willing to do anything if it meant Max could live again.  
  
Logan thought for a few minutes and then wheeled himself over to his desk. He opened a small door on the side and took out a box. He hadn't seen this box in ages. He hoped it was still in there.  
  
Opening the box Logan, he took out he only thing inside. It felt cool in his hand. As he looked at it, what little light there was gleamed off the slivery gun.  
  
"Max...if I could bring you back.if I could give you my life.."  
  
Logan pictured Max in his mind, wishing life back into her body.  
  
"If I can't bring you back, maybe I can at least be with you on the other side.."  
  
Logan sighed and lifted the gun to the side of his head. "Max." A single tear slid down his face.  
  
He took one last breath before pulling the trigger. 


	3. Watching Eyes

Chap.3  
  
"Please don't. I've seen enough blood shed to last two lifetimes."  
  
Logan dropped the gun and it clattered to the floor. Heart racing, he wheeled around to face his intruder.  
  
"Who are you and how did you get in here?" Why was his heart racing so fast? Was it that he was just about to end his life? Maybe it was the fact that he had been caught about to end his life..Or was it the stranger standing in his living room that made Logan's heart skip a beat?  
  
"I'm a friend. That's all you need to know right now." The girl looked at Logan with smoldering, blue-grey eyes. Her shoulder-length, black hair hung in limp waves, soaked by what Logan could only assume was the water falling outside. She was pale, slim, maybe around 125 pounds and looked to be about 5'7''. She was standing with her arm clenched over her stomach and appeared to be shivering. Was she cold?  
  
Logan studied the girl's face. Young, maybe 24, 25.. High cheek bones, full lips, dark lashes, soft slopping eye-brows, slim nose.. She was perfect. Too perfect. Logan knew women that perfect only happened in movies (pre- pulse) and of course.. As a result of Manticore. He was guessing he wasn't in a movie.  
  
"That still doesn't tell me how you got in here." Logan had a hunch he knew how she had gotten in.  
  
"If you don't want guests, you shouldn't leave your windows open." The girl smiled and her face almost lit up the room.  
  
Zack said that to me once.How could she have known? She couldn't have known? Could she??  
  
Logan's mind was racing. She was beautiful. And he was willing to bet she could kick the crap out of anyone who said otherwise.  
  
"What do you want?" Logan asked.  
  
"I need your help. I know I can trust you. I've been watching you for a long time."  
  
Logan could see the pain in her eyes. Pain she was trying desperately to hide. The girl flinched and grabbed at her side.  
  
"Are you alright?" Logan wheeled closer the girl.  
  
"I'm fine. I'm just tired." She shook violently and tried to cover it from him by rubbing her arms like she was cold from the rain, but Logan could see a trail of blood her hand left on her arm.  
  
"You're not fine, you're bleeding." Logan wanted to help, but the girl seemed reluctant.  
  
"No, please..there isn't time. I need 'Eyes-On.." The girl cried out in pain and collapsed to the floor. 


	4. Following Protocol

Chap.4  
  
  
  
"I don't know, Logan. You say she just showed up? She didn't say who she was?"  
  
"No. All she said was that she was a friend." Logan was sitting in his wheel chair at his desk. He glanced at the girl sleeping on his couch. She was resting peacefully.  
  
"I'm coming over. Maybe I'll be able to place her."  
  
"Deck..if she IS from Manticore..she might not want your face to be the first thing she sees when she comes to."  
  
"Too bad..she'll have to deal with her past. The same way all the others have had to." With that, Lydecker snapped his cell phone closed and Logan was left to argue with a dial tone.  
  
'Great...what if she tells him she caught me trying to kill myself?' Logan was now embarrassed he had thought of such a violent act. Ending his own life wouldn't bring Max or Zack back, and he knew it. Deep down he was just looking for an easy out. A way to end the pain he was feeling.  
  
Logan wheeled over to the sleeping girl and looked down. She had come to shortly after she had collapsed and he had insisted she sit down. She had agreed to sit and then she had fallen asleep and had been sleeping for a few hours now. She must have been exhausted. Logan reached down to move a small lock of hair that had fallen over the sleeping girls face. His fingertip brushed her skin. It was ever softer than he had expected.  
  
"Who are you.?" Logan asked as if she would answer him in her dreaming state.  
  
That's when he saw it. Right there, on the back of her neck. Just where the others have it. A barcode!  
  
" I knew it! You are from Manticore. But which one are you? You're too old to be an X7. You even look older than the X5." Logan shook his head. He was taking to the girl as if she could hear him!  
  
"I'm going crazy."  
  
Just then there was a knock on his door and Logan knew Deck was on the other side.  
  
"I'll bet he can't wait to get his hands on you." Logan told the girl as he wheeled over to let Lydecker in.  
  
"Where is she?" Deck pushed past Logan as if he wasn't even there.  
  
"Over there on the couch. Don't wake her."  
  
Deck walked slowly over to the woman and seemed to study her.  
  
"She's not any of MY kids..." Deck looked puzzled.  
  
"If she's not an X5, or an X7.what.I mean.Who is she?" Logan wheeled up behind Deck and tried to think.  
  
"She looks like a Manticore creation...she has the barcode." Deck turned the girls head softly so he could a better look at the black bars on her neck.  
  
In what seemed like an instant, Lydecker was thrown across the room, where he collided with the wall. He was out before he hit the ground.  
  
Logan's brain hadn't had time to process what he had just seen when the girl was on her feet and across the room at Deck's limp body.  
  
"You." She snarled, her eyes filled with rage. "That's for everything you ever put any of us through."  
  
Logan wheeled quickly over to the girl's side.  
  
"Hold on, now. Deck may have done some really bad things..terrible things, in fact..but he IS trying to help now. He knows what he did in Manticore is wrong and he's trying to make better what he can."  
  
"You're DEFFENDING him??" The girl turned on Logan and her smoldering eyes seemed to burn a whole right through his very soul.  
  
"No.I'm not defending him. And you have every right to be pissed at him for what he did." Logan tried to think fast. He didn't want to lose control over this situation and he didn't want her to think he thought Lydecker desserved the Medal of Honor just because he had changed his ways.  
  
"You have no IDEA what he has put me through..what he's put ALL of us through." The girl seemed to clam down a little and she sat down on the floor, unwilling to leave Deck there in case he were to wake up..she might need to kick his ass again.  
  
"Why don't you tell me who you are?"  
  
"You already know who I am. I'm from Manticore..I was created.just like all the rest." Her voice seemed to sadden, as if stating out loud that she was CREATED some how made her inhuman.  
  
"I know you're from Manticore.I saw your barcode. But you're not one of the X5s..Deck said so himself. And you're too old to be an X7.." Logan trailed off, hoping the dark-haired woman would fill in the blanks for him.  
  
She fixed her eyes on Logan and grinned. "Are you calling me OLD??"  
  
It was the last thing Logan had expected her to say. "No..I.umm." Flustered, Logan tried to think of what to say next.  
  
"I only ment that you looked older than any of the X7s or the X5s.not that you look THAT old.."  
  
"Oh.ok." She looked away and then turned back again, as if she were trying to decide if she could really trust him.  
  
"You mean Lydecker REALLY doesn't know who I am?" She looked unsure.  
  
"Nope. He said you weren't one of his kids."  
  
"HIS kids?? None of us are HIS kids.."  
  
"I know.he just always calls them..." Logan didn't finish.  
  
"I know...I know."  
  
She sighed and looked at Logan. " The truth is..He might not even know I'm alive. He probably thinks I was destroyed.. Logan..I'm." She trailed off.  
  
"Yes?" Logan looked at her with a pealing heart.  
  
"I'm NOT any normal Manticore creation. I'm different. I'm more powerful, faster, have better hearing, sight, taste, smell...Logan..I was the first one ever created. I'm the protocol. I'm an X0." 


End file.
